Many of you might know that the technologies of Japanese sanitary system is the best in the world, and I believe adoption of Western style toilet and washlet is the greatest innovation of postwar period. It is hard to find Japanese style toilets in metropolitan areas, but in countryside, these are still remaining. If you are planning to travel to country side, you need prepare to do your job with Japanese style toilet.

For gentlemen, I am telling you a secret of Japanese style toilet which I found last week at the old school Japanese Izakaya in Hodogaya as the picture below.

Japanese Toilets

When you travel in Japan, you will find the toilets in Japan are always clean and high tech. These high tech bidet toilet is called “washlet”, and you can find lots of buttons to operate the toilet as the picture below.

The descriptions are usually only in Japanese, and if you can’t read Japanese, you will be in a huge trouble. Some toilets even don’t have a handle or a button to flush.

Fortunately, on January 17th 2017, Japan sanitary equipment industory association announced that the top 9 companies in the toilet industory including Toto, Lixil, Toshiba, and Panasonic agreed to standardize the pictograms of the controll panels of the toilets. According to the questionnaire for the foreign travelers, many foreign travellers stated the descriptions of toilet were unclear and had a hard time to deal with them. For 2020 Tokyo Olympics, now, Japanese toilet operation pictogram are standardized and they are working for standardizing in internationally.

Japanese toilet operation pictogram

here is the detailed and English translation of standardized pictograms with English translations.

The picture above is the map of railways in Tokyo. Usually, train traffic situation in Tokyo gets worse in the areas between the Tokyo and other prefectures. Many people live in suburbs of Tokyo or prefectures that located next to Tokyo to commute to middle of Tokyo by trains. Housing in Tokyo is very expensive especially for the families. The train crossing Chiba to Tokyo, Saitama to Tokyo are the worst in the commuting time zone (7:00 am – 10:00 am).

2: Sobu Line

1: Tozai Line

If you are planning to work in Japan, please consider to avoid these lines to commute. Moreover, if you are planning to travel in Tokyo, train traffic situation in Tokyo during the commuting time zone (07:00am – 09:00am) gets nasty especially in the bad weather, please consider the time riding the trains in Japan.